


Home is where the Heart is

by Sokorra



Series: 2019 Prompt Collection [5]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, salty canon fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 18:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19400215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sokorra/pseuds/Sokorra
Summary: Gendry gets a visitor in the forge one spring evening.





	Home is where the Heart is

**Author's Note:**

> This is an continuation/longer edit of a prompt responce posted [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128133/chapters/45560272)

_ So here's a tip for free _

_ You better use it wisely _

_ Scrap what I said last week _

_ We'll talk when we're dead just ignore me _

-WSTR “Silly Me”

"Marry me." Gendry stopped at the words, his hammer in mid air. It had been an uneventful day and he had been getting a few good hours of metalwork done while the forge was empty and there were no meetings he had to attend. He wasn't able to smith like he used to - he had too much on his plate to do both - but he liked to occasionally keep his skills up and get some work in.

He had been alone for the last hour, the other smiths gone home to their families. He hadn't expected to hear anyone, let alone the voice of a ghost he had long lost. Still, he laid the hammer down and turned to see if maybe the heat had finally gotten to him.

She stood in the doorway, looking more at peace then he had ever seen her. Her clothes were foriegn, some pant-skirt combo that he sure must have been something Sansa suggested. Her hair was down from its usual bun just resting on her shoulders, and she smiled serenely at him, if a bit nervous. Her grey eyes, which had haunted him for the last couple of years bore into his own. She looked beautiful as she ever did, his Arya. His Lady even if she had said no.

"What?" He finally got the words out, the chill of the spring rain reminding him this could be real.

"Marry me." She walked closer to him, stopping only a few feet away. If he lifted his hands he could touch her, but he didn’t.

"You didn't want to marry me."

"Not then." He wasn't sure what had changed. Hell, he still wasn't sure this wasn't just a dream and he was sitting somewhere concussed. Perhaps the rain was just him keeping up to date.

"But now?"

"I want to come home."

"You're a bit far from Winterfell."

"Not what I meant, stupid," she responded, a smile on her face and affection in her tone. "I meant  _ you _ ."

"Nothing has changed since the last time."

"Plenty has, everything has."

"I'm still a Lord, I still have a realm to run."

"You never wanted to be one. I can't imagine you fit the traditional mold." She wasn't wrong. He hadn't wanted to be a Lord, he had just wanted a name. He wanted the family that went with it, the chance to be with her without society bearing down on her all their wrath. She deserved it all.

He had always loved her, it had grown in the background for so long that when she stepped in front of him in a forge like this one only in the North, and tossed a few knives it was like it was finally settling in that he was in love with her. And he had always known that society wouldn’t except an unrecognized bastard as the companion, platonic or romantic, of a lady. Particularly a Stark.

"It would make you a lady." He never thought that she wasn’t, but he knew her aversion to the term, and what it could stand for.

"Do you plan on keeping me locked in a tower only to sew, boss around the household servants and birth children?"

"No...why would I?" She seemed to find his confusion on the matter amusing, biting back a half smile before becoming serious once more.

"Well, that was what  _ Lady  _ meant to me, what I thought you were asking for. My mother, my sister, they both were the perfect ladies." She sighed and came closer, settling on the bench beside him, her knees brushing his legs. "My mother ran the household, ran the family and mostly did not see outside the castle walls. I was never able to be that kind of Lady, and for the longest time that was all I saw it being. Sewing clothes while the men had the adventures. Wearing dresses that limited what you could do, hosting parties for people you didn’t give two figs about because it was expected of you. 

“It took me a long time - and some soul searching boat rides - to come to terms with the fact that perhaps you asking me to be your lady wasn't the same as asking me to be pinned inside a keep. Or that there was anything wrong with those who wanted that - Sansa I think still wants that, even if she's Queen. Perhaps not the imprisonment part, just the routine of having a household to run, children to raise."

"So you've seen your sister then?"

"I had to tell her my plans. I saw Bran too." He heard the sorrow in her words. So she hadn't seen Jon, her most beloved sibling. "She gave her blessing, they both did."

"To marry me?"

"If you'll have me." For the first time he realised she wasn't trying to hurt him more. She was legitimately asking him to forget what she said before, to forge a new future together. He moved to sit next to her a hand raised to lightly touch her check.

"I've always wanted you. You just needed to want me too."

“Always, Gen.” The smile on her face nearly blinded him and he found himself full of Arya Stark in his arms, her lips smashing into his own. This was familiar enough. Their romantic and sexual relationship might have been relatively short but it seemed like fitting back in place as they rearrange themselves to be more comfortable in the kiss.

“I love you,” he stated when she finally released him. “I know my proposal that night was ill timed, and probably badly phrased, but no matter what that will never change.

“I love you two, stupid,” she grinned. “Why else would I marry you.”

“Well, I do have a pretty nice castle now. And Davos comes with the deal.”

“Well, if you had only told me that sooner.” they both laughed, the tension completely leaving him. 

“Are you sure, Arya?” He asked her to be reassured. “You were pretty certain you didn’t want this life.”

“I am. We can forge our own definition of the Lord and Lady of the keep.” She smiled. “I might not always be the best partner for this, but I want  _ you _ .”

“You may still have to host dinners for people you don’t give two figs about.”

“Well, that’s what you are there for.” She pulled him in for another kiss, and that was how they were found moments later when Ser Davos, visiting from King's Landing, came to gather his new Lord.

If he stepped back out of the forge for a few minutes, well, he wasn’t going to say.

  
  



End file.
